Happy Halloween!

If ever there was a comic book fit to be reviewed on Halloween, it's Sea Of Red: Volume 1: No Grave But The Sea. Rick Remender and Kieron Dwyer spin an action-paced yarn of "vampirates" (that's a joke from the book, not a hokey made-up word of Neilalien's to describe genre-munging) and a Spanish sailor who survives to the present day to seek revenge and/or the peace of death. A bit too much of a brutal gorefest for Neilalien's sensibilities, which are admittedly a bit too wussy for slasher films- let's just say that nothing happens off-panel to be left to the imagination. But with every bloody spittle luciously rendered by Salgood Sam (he drew Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #63), it's hard to resist. Great contrast between the humanity of our classic cursed hero, and the monstrosity of the modern-day folks who would profit from his wretched existence. If The Walking Dead has been shambling a bit too slowly for you lately, dive into the Sea Of Red.

Morgan Webb: So why do you spell "magic" with a "K" at the end?
Crowley: To seperate my art from the cheap theatrics of impersonators.
MW: Why not spell it with just a "k"?
Crowley: [in a whiny voice] Because that's a character from X-Men.

Another page on Yronwode's wonderful website, this one highlighting the similarity between Ditko's design for Dr. Strange's Eye of Agamotto and an apotropaic Nepali charm against the evil eye called the All-Seeing Eye of Buddha, crowned with the 108 Snail Martyrs.

The Hollywood actor, who recently became a father again when his 21-year-old wife, Alice, gave birth to a baby boy, admits he named his son Kal-El- Superman's birth name- because he has 'a warm spot in my heart' for comic books. Nicolas- who took his stage name Cage from Marvel superhero Luke Cage- says he is so fond of comics because they taught him how to read. He said of his son's unusual name: 'We wanted a name that was exotic, was American and stood for something good. So Kal-el was a name we came up with, and then Kal for short.'

Gail Simone: I was such a pathetic Titans and Night Force fan that I must've read those issues to tatters.
marvw: Thanks, Gail. As you know that's the way we all love to see comics. I hate seeing the ones in plastic. Comics are meant to be read until they fall apart.

avengerfan: Marv, with 20/20 hindsight-- what would you change about your "Crisis" experience?
marvw: I would shoot all the other editors so I could have done the ending of the story the way I originally planned it-- with nobody remembering the Crisis at all and all DC comics beginning with number one the next month.

What I'd really like this new Thing book to be is comic-book-comfort-food. Readable mac n' cheese, fluffernutter sandwiches, or a grilled cheese and tomato soup combo. Whatever makes you feel good inside- about these larger-than-life heroes- and their two-fisted tales.

Kuwait-City-based Teshkeel Media Group has signed an agreement to bring Arabic-language Marvel comics, magazines and trade paperbacks to the Middle East [Newsarama] [ICv2]

Japanese artist Yuki Suetsugu caught swiping, entire back catalog pulled, career possibly over; not so much is expected from American artists [Ninth Art]

"I'n da Glack Nask!": How do comic book characters with no lips speak in a normal manner? [The Hurting]
If you've ever tried to stretch your jaw and do a Skeletor impression, you're aware of the problem. "I'll get you now, He-Nan!"

The Surrogates #1-2 (out of 5)
By Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. Published by Top Shelf.

When a comic is billed as "a small indie publisher's first foray into in-house serialized mainstream (sci-fi genre) comics", that's a tempting lure for someone like Neilalien who likes to think of himself as (a) an industry wonk and (b) a helper of books intended to fill the empty chasm of adult genre/action between superhero and artcomix. As it turns out, the lure wasn't an empty hook- based on the first two issues, you can believe the hype this time.

The year is 2054, and people are doing a lot more than only interacting with co-workers via email or just staying in their basements pretending to be someone else on an internet message board, sex chat line or World of Warcraft server- or should we say, people are doing a lot less. Now they stay in their basements and go to their jobs and fully interact with the outside world and with each other through surrogates- they're linked to androids that always look great. And safer too- if you're a cop and your surrogate gets thrown off a building, just crank up the spare. But when someone starts looking for a way to mass-destroy surrogates and get humanity back into the real world, it's a sci-fi mystery that evokes Gibson or Blade Runner.

The story is excellent so far, as a cop-mystery sci-fi tale, and also because the big-idea premise and its impact on human relations is also explored, with great Watchmen-like "extras". The art is good storytelling, but its sketchy monocolor nature doesn't work completely for Neilalien- it's just not his style, but also, it evokes a "messy" human world that might work well when it's real people talking to each other on Dread Reservation, but not when it's supposed to depict a clean "perfect" futuristic world of beautiful surrogates. Or maybe that's the point, or maybe the art suggests that we're looking at this world through Lt. Greer's eyes, or VR goggles. The paneling, lettering and word balloons are neat and clear.

Top Shelf's Surrogates Page: If you order/pre-order all five issues, you only pay for shipping once and get the issues as they come out.
Top Shelf is having a sale that's only lasting for a couple more days: if you move quickly, you can get #1 and #2 for $4 total if your total order's over $30.

Doc Sighting: House of M #7
Neilalien likes it when Doc gets respect, like the line, "Do nothing till Doctor Strange says." Otherwise, this fugue is fucked. The Cloak of Levitation should not be included in Doc's astral form, but Neilalien's been bitching about that for years.

GØDLAND (#1-4)'s story and art evoke a time when comic books were such fun, weird, dynamic, imaginative rides that the creators were suspected of doing drugs. Neilalien doesn't know what Casey and Scioli are smoking, but at three bucks a hit, you won't find better in Tompkins Square Park.

Top 10: Beyond The Farthest Precinct #1-3 (out of 5) pushes the right buttons. Creators can really have a fun time in Neopolis (if they can tune out the 'It's not Alan Moore', 'It's not Smax', etc. which is true, this mini-series is not as good as those, but it's still good). There's a great passage in #3 about a spandexed and drunk Jesus in Godz Bar (and the horrified Christian police officer called to the situation). There's always something fun in the background, too: Frank's White Castle; Snikt, Thwip and Bamf, Attorneys At Law; Daleks in the robot section of town, etc.

Action Philosophers is very smart, very laugh-out-loud, and excellently cartooned. #3, covering Freud, Jung and Joseph Campbell, is another triumph.

What, no Infinite Crisis #1? Is it wrong to have no interest in these big massive events? Neilalien's not asking that to be cool- it's actual angst. Is that like a political weblog never mentioning the Iraqupation? DC marketing must be doing something right, for Neilalien to even have these doubts.

"I was just as surprised as anyone when Marvel asked me to pitch this new series," Cebulski said. "But after hearing about the trades going into new printings and retailers asking if we will ever revisit the Mangaverse, Marvel was quick to answer the call."

But if the Mangaverse has done well, it's because of Ben Dunn, and it doesn't look like he's involved this time round.

I see [comics in academia] as a validation that's not without its problematic side. Comics is a self-described lowly medium, and it's been up until recently been considered lowly by other people. There's a feeling, especially among underground and alternative cartoonists, that comics should remain lowly so that it remains under the cultural radar and thus stays more authentic. You see the same feeling with punk rock -- the more despised we are, the better, it'll just let us just do what we do. And although I think there's some truth to that, it's also ultimately self-defeating when applied to the medium as a whole.

I was a big Dr. Strange fan from the Steve Ditko days. And one of the things I loved about Ditko's work in the Dr. Strange material... I thought Steve really invented, over the course of that strip... a graphic system of magic...

Missed it: Last month's Simpsons Super Spectacular #1 is full of Ditko homage goodness [via Ditko-L (membership req'd)] [image]
You just know Ditko uber-fans Batton Lash and Michael T. Gilbert had something to do with this. Apparently three Radioactive Man stories pay homage to Ditko's Captain Atom stories. The image link above shows a Radioactive Man story first page that looks exactly like the first page from Captain Atom's origin story from Space Adventures #33 (March 01960). Hopefully Neilalien can find a copy at the shop later today.

The growing problem of comics piracy; "we need an iTunes for comics" [Lying In The Gutters]
17,500 pages of X-Men comics on DVD-ROM for $50 [ICv2]

Sounds like the Tokyopop contracts that creators get for original English-language (OEL) manga really suck [The Engine]
Same business model of corporate exploitation, different century? Via The Beat with much more, re: ownership; 'innovation in comics and new characters not being rewarded in the marketplace' sets up publisher-risk-averse situation where the untested creator gives up copyright while the established creator can't sell enough to justify being given 100% copyright.

Marvel mutants to become a compelling, tiny, persecuted minority again [Quesada House of M/Decimation conference call at ICv2] [Pulse]
Instead of a diluted megafranchise with millions of mutants living on an island. But only 198 mutants surviving can still mean 198 solo titles... There was a lot of Dr. Strange in House of M #7- may have to return to the shop and report back.

Meta: Spamblogs on Blogspot unleashed [A Whole Lotta Nothing] [via Waxy]
If you're wondering about all those hits from texas-hold-em-poker.blogspot.com and superman-batman-xmen.blogspot.com in your traffic stats.

Fanboy Rampage ends its run
FR ventured onto the message boards so we didn't have to, and the site/resource will be sorely missed. "I'm telling you, the only reason that Neilalien has lasted so long is because he kills younger, more innocent, bloggers and drinks their blood in some twisted Ditko-inspired mystical ceremony."

We Don't Talk Anymore The Way We Used To

Meta: Save As Draft: Public blogging is becoming sterile, as online writers migrate to LiveJournal and want more control over who sees what [Torrez]

Since the first flamewar on Usenet, the first crackpot takeover of a blog's commenting system, the first alienated family member or lost job due to the eternal omniwarehouse that is Google, etc., online people have increasingly and naturally been holding back their best, riskiest and most personal stuff as unpublished drafts, or moving into/behind gated communities like LiveJournal with its public/private post settings, secret FOAF cabals and mailing lists, strictly moderated fora, etc.- and as a result, public interblog conversation/interaction, once the Great Hope for the Inter-nut, has suffered for it, paled, has given up trying to be that hope.

While Torrez is probably talking more about the fate of more personal content online, this note dovetails too easily with and validates one of Neilalien's own recent private speculations and held-back saved-as-unpublished texts, so he won't give it a pass: How much of the perceived waning of the public comics interblog conversation is due to all of the "fight clubs" now, all the gated factionalized communities for comics bloggers, for fanboys, for women, secret mailing lists for art snobs, retailers-only message boards at their industry associations, members-only creator rooms at The Engine, etc.? Has this "privacy migration", and evolving changes in the way we blog and communicate online, occurred in the comicsblogosphere's comics conversations as some say it has happened to personal content in the whole blogosphere?

Perhaps Neilalien muses from a position of great weakness here. He's never joined any of the "fight clubs"- by choice for many reasons; the desires to protect his time, protect against groupthink, and protect and champion for the public linkability of what is essentially selfishly his own blog content, jump out most often- so he has no clue if a paradise of Love and Good Stuff is hiding behind the curtains (he more cynically assumes that it hasn't been All Good than paranoiacally assumes that it has). This website's been pretty sterile and nonconversational all along (ahead of the curve again!)- and nothing less "sterile" or "more" whatever is forthcoming- no solution or revolution will be found at this linklog, so can't point fingers. And he can certainly understand the desire for controlling signal-to-noise ratios, fighting information overload, gating off the jerks, privacy against Google and who sees what, and the appeal of decoder-ring membership. Maybe the explosion of public comics blogs, Fanboy Rampage's aggregation of still-public comics conversations and lively commenting space, and the apparent declining post counts elsewhere, are all easy refutations to this post.

There are many theories why the comics interblog conversation has decreased that are more specific to our clan, and aren't so internet-meta. Maybe there's no longer a Journalista around to piss people off and then self-congratulatorily hub-aggregate the results, to give "talking past one another" the illusion of two-way radio. Maybe there's little that's new or more that can be argued in the standard debates like Are Superheroes Fascist; maybe comics as a topic has been dead for 20 years, and blogging's emergence as a new forum just picked the scab off for one more/last? round of hubbub. Maybe tool changes like commenting systems and RSS feeds/readers lead to rule changes, new behavior norms, less interblog mojo. Maybe comics people are a passionate bunch, battling over dwindling resources and childhood treasures, and just can't have a conversation without eventually enraging and fatiguing each other until each sulks in his/her own corner safe from dissenting opinions. We consume our comic books in solitude, so we naturally become solitary content providers too, each doing our own clever thing until the day The Comics Journal or some other non-blog official outlet comes a-poaching.

So have the crossblog interactions decreased? If yes, why? Are they now happening elsewhere? What role have the "fight clubs"/"flights to privacy" played? Neilalien can't help but wonder what marbles people have removed from the public square forever. The smart people smartened up, off to hidden gardens for more nourishing and nuanced connections and conversations, and who could blame them. It's a good bet that many people aren't discussing comic books any less, or in any less interesting ways, nowadays- they're just not talking about them so much out here interacting with the peanut gallery.

If true, then the loss must be ours: those of us who remain out here, with a desire to learn, and who are not so peanutted.

Expert panel muses on Diamond's monopoly/the Direct Market model and its impact on industry growth and indies: the good, bad, and realistic [Industry Buzz column at Buzzscope]
A deal with Hell once saved comics from the brink- now we smell something burning.

The Direct Market's too hobbled to grow a small press book into a hit nowadays anyway, and web > TPB exists, so Diamond's new threshold is no big loss [Ninth Art]

Does Mortality Matter? WizardWorld Boston panel overview [Newsarama]
The revolving door of death and resurrection, and heroic sacrifice later rendered meaningless, in a superhero genre in which death may be the only change allowed to characters.

Nice little overview of the psychology behind William Marston's Wonder Woman [Sisyphus and the Cuckoo Clock Speech] [via In Sequence]
Why bondage? "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power."

House Of Cards [tomorrow's Washington Post Magazine]
This massive article probably provides as good a comprehensible overview of that Clinton Gala (and the players involved, including Peter Paul from Stan Lee Media) as we're going to get. The writer April Witt will be online to field questions and comments about this story Monday 1 PM ET at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

Mark Evanier asks: Where did Stan Lee get that "with great power there must also come -- great responsibility" line? [News From ME]
Luke 12:48 ("Much is required from those to whom much is given" (New Living Translation)) is a candidate- but do Jews read the New Testament? Don't know, just asking...

Updated: Still many conflicting reports, but it seems that the Pasadena mansion that just burned down was not the 60's Batman TV show one, but another nearby [BBC]
The Batman Tudor Mansion was also used in Dead Again and is reportedly owned by Paul McCartney. No word yet if they got the giant penny out of the Cave. Developing...

Strange: Beginnings & Endings reviewed: A- [Clandestine Critic]
The reviewer is a lucky man to have been able to enjoy this book- and luckier still to have a girlfriend interested in Dr. Strange.

(Update: January 02006: The reviewer at Clandestine Critic has apparently interpreted Neilalien's playful bon mot here as negative mocking? This was certainly not Neilalien's intended meaning, and he regrets if any vagueness in tone, or envy, made him sound like a meanie. Neilalien was not thinking at all in a vein akin to, say, the reviewer being "lucky to be ignorant enough" to like a Strange story that Neilalien did not. But instead, Neilalien was jealous that the reviewer, not being a longtime Doc fan as he has stated, was thus able to enjoy Strange as a "fresh perspective", rather than have his enjoyment sadly hobbled by change-resistant nerdmudgeonly ways like Neilalien. And Neilalien's still just flat-out jealous about the Doctor-Strange-enjoying girlfriend.)

Alphabetti Fumetti gets to E [Ninth Art]
Neilalien won't be blogging every installment of this (D had Ditko), but this entry is good: Ellis, Englehart, and Ennis ("THOR: VIKINGS sidelined its lead character in favour of men, guns, and all the usual gubbins - but with the addition of a brilliantly sarcastic Doctor Strange, who stole every scene he was in.")

Neilalien's noted (especially to miffed Hulk fans around the time of Defenders v2 #6, when Hulk suckerpunched Doc with a big WRAMM! with no obvious mystical shields up and Doc didn't end up as a grease spot [one message board post found]) that although Doc may have a crushably nonsuperhuman body, the comic book record has shown that he is almost never defenseless or easily surprised. He has invisible instantaneous 24/7 protections and blessings up that's absorbed a lot of punishment including punches from the Juggernaut, or he has quick martial arts reflexes for dodging the full force of an attack, or precognitive awareness like a Spidey-Sense for quickcasting a shield, etc. Non-Doc fans always seem to clamor that this or that attack should have made him a splotch of guts on the wall since the artist didn't draw a Shield of the Seraphim and Doc didn't have time to cast one, but it just makes sense that the Sorcerer Supreme would have an early-warning and/or always-on defense system operating to survive unexpected dangers. A mundane explosion, suckerpunch, or a charge by The Rhino from an unseen angle shouldn't take Dr. Strange out, even if he isn't a damage-absorbing brick-type character and those flowy shirts are hiding some girly arms.

(Unfortunately, Doc has indeed been shown a couple times in situations equivalent to being snuck upon and knocked out by a whack to his frail head with a lead pipe (Infinty Abyss #5, anyone?)- you weren't expecting consistency, were you? (You could argue that Mordo's suckerblast in Strange Tales #140 is one of these times, but Neilalien would counter that during the pincers of powers battle with Dormammu, "Neither you nor I shall use any other spells or incantations" included any automatic 24/7 protections. Plus, Neilalien's talking here more about physical threats- a surprise mystical attack that's designed to defeat automatic mystical defenses is a whole different hairball, and much more interesting.))

Mallrats: Tenth Anniversary Extended Edition DVD out [praise at UGO's Culture Dish]
The most "rewatchable" Smith film is aging well, a great movie for comicbookphiliacs, and Neilalien must note, a very high babe quotient.

Q: What's the most important thing you've learned since entering the comic arena?
A: That the stereotypical idea that the audience is full of dateless pasty white guys living in mom's basement is a crock of poo. When I go to a con, I see all these creative readers, all colors and sizes and genders and orientations. I feel like some creators are afraid to admit that the audience is cooler than they are, so they perpetuate this myth. It's irritating. Don't speak down to the audience. Don't take them for granted.

Comic Foundry and MoCCA are also having a networking event in NYC on Monday night [Comic Foundry]

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